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Image: Point Ellice House seen in a painting by Edward Goodall. (Image msc130-12698_01 courtesy of the British Columbia Postcards Collection, a digital initiative of Simon Fraser University Library)
The Directors of the BC Historical Federation are sad to hear that Point Ellice House in Victoria is closing. Our hearts go out to the staff and volunteers of the Vancouver Island Local History Society, a member of the BCHF. We know they have worked hard through difficult times to find new ways to share stories that challenge and inspire us.
Our members are wearing down. Museums, archives, and cultural institutions across British Columbia continue to be affected by financial and capacity shortfalls stemming from the pandemic and chronic underfunding in the sector. In addition, high costs are stretching budgets precariously thin for many of our member organizations.
We urge governments at all levels – local, provincial, and federal – to support organizations operating cultural and historical institutions to provide sustainable funding for all aspects of operations, from staff wages, to repair and maintenance costs, to supplies for school programming.
The BCHF will continue its advocacy to support the work of our members. Generous support of the dedicated people who continue to collaborate, research, and share the stories of this place is essential to the well-being of communities.
An excerpt from the Spring 2023 issue of British Columbia History magazine.
The Hope station in its original location in the 1970s. (Courtesy of Tashme Museum)
Just over two years ago, the 1916 Hope Canadian National Railway Station was destined for the wrecker’s ball, until an army of citizens launched a grassroots campaign that resulted in a rescue plan. A stop work order was issued, a Statement of Significance created, and ultimately, the station house was saved.
Japanese Canadians carrying their belongings are loaded into the back of trucks at Hope station house in 1942. (Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre NNMCC, L2021-2-1-002)
The Tashme Historical Society stepped up and negotiated with the District of Hope for almost a year, and now the society is the proud owner of this historic train station. The society operates the Sunshine Valley Tashme Museum, southeast of Hope.
In 1942 more than 2,600 Japanese Canadians were interned at Tashme. Men, women, and children forcibly removed from the west coast were loaded into the back of trucks at Hope Station House for the two-hour journey to a rudimentary camp where there was no running water or electricity.
Museum manager Ryan Ellan draws a strong link between the station house and the story of Japanese internment. He told the Hope Standard: “There were nearly 9,000 Japanese-Canadians that got off trains at the Hope Station House…to be transferred to the other internment camps throughout BC. Or off the train, at Hope Station House, to the waiting trucks to make the 14-mile trek to Tashme.”
The Hope Station House will be relocated to 919 Water Avenue to become the town’s visitor information centre and community museum.
Image: Merchant Yip Sang and family members in front of the Wing Sang Company building, 51 East Pender Street. (City of Vancouver Archives AM1108-S4-: CVA 689-52)
The Chinese Canadian Museum is preparing to open this summer in the Wing Sang Building, in the heart of Vancouver’s Chinatown. Built by Yip Sang in 1889, the brick structure tripled in size as his import/export business grew. Yip Sang was the Chinese agent for the CPR who brought in 6,000–7,000 workers. To most people he was the unofficial mayor of Chinatown.
The building was more recently owned by real estate marketer Bob Rennie. A $27.5 million grant from the provincial government and a $7.8 million donation from Rennie allowed the Chinese Canadian Museum Society of BC to acquire the restored building. One hundred years after the Chinese Exclusion Act—which halted almost all migration from China—the new museum will honour Chinese Canadian history. Grace Wong, chair of the society, told CBC, “We want to reflect the stories of not only Vancouver but all of BC, and ultimately across the country.”
Image: Keyohwhudachun headdress (Mayoo Kehoh Society and Royal Ontario Museum)
A headdress belonging to a Susk’uz family has been repatriated from the Royal Ontario Museum. Made from female human hair, baleen, and seashells, the headdress is physical evidence of governance over territory by the Maiyoo Keyoh, a family grouping on the north shore of Beaver Lake near Fort St James. Following a repatriation ceremony, the headdress is now the focal point of a new exhibit at The Exploration Place, in Prince George.
Keyohwudachun (chief) Petra A’Huille, great-great-granddaughter of George A’Huille, who once wore the headdress, described seeing it for the first time: “I never thought that I would see something like that in my life. Just to touch it … my great-great-grandmothers’ hair—it’s still there after maybe 200 years.”
Murray Sinclair, chair of the Indian and Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission, spoke via a virtual link. “That’s the beginning of reconciliation—stop hiding us from ourselves, hiding away our sense of identity.” He congratulated the Royal Ontario Museum, the BC Museums Association, and The Exploration Place for helping ensure the headdress was returned 140 years after it was taken. His message for the Maiyoo Kehoh: “This will allow you to talk to your young people about a very important part of their connection with the history of your nation.”
More about the exhibit here: https://tinyurl.com/mr3feazw.
Ferry wharf, crowds and automobiles at North Vancouver captured in 1914. (NVMA 2976)
North Vancouver’s Shipyards District has been transformed over the last dozen years. Wallace Shipyards once employed thousands of people, and the Lower Lonsdale area was a major transportation hub for trains, ferries, and other ships. Over time, the industrial area fell into decline, and the City of North Vancouver spearheaded revitalization plans.
New development includes galleries, restaurants, housing, and open public space; its industrial heritage is preserved through historic docks, buildings, and giant cranes. The Museum of North Vancouver (MONOVA) opened in the area (Esplanade West) in 2021 and has launched a new exhibit space with You Are Here @ The Shipyards.
Acting MONOVA director Laurel Lawry says they wanted to introduce themselves to the neighbourhood. “Since time immemorial, this place has served as a gathering place for Indigenous peoples, for those arriving in North Vancouver, and to the commercial and industrial drivers—we see the new, vibrant Shipyards District as a culmination of those experiences and transformations.” Artifacts, oral history, and multimedia displays will share the Shipyards story until the end of 2023. Watch a BC Historical Federation interview about MONOVA here: https://tinyurl.com/bdfz7vck.
Rendering of Salishan Place by the River. (Courtesy Township of Langley)
Boxes filled with cherished artifacts have arrived and exhibit development is underway. The new salishan Place cultural centre at Fort Langley is a project of the Township of Langley and the Kwantlen, Katzie, Matsqui, and Semiahmoo First Nations. The three-storey facility incorporates natural materials like Douglas fir and western red cedar and replaces the Langley Centennial Museum built in 1958. salishan Place also marks a new approach to how museums tellstories, and whose stories are shared.
The Coast Salish cedar basket motif on the building’s exterior offers a clue: a weaving together of strands of history from the area’s multiple cultural perspectives. The drum is a prominent design feature, connecting people from around the world. The Township of Langley’s director of Arts, Culture and Community Initiatives, Peter Tulumello, calls it “an all-inclusive, single museum.” Interpretive themes that emerged from community consultations include welcoming, inclusivity, collaboration, reflection, and advancing truth and reconciliation. A soft opening of salishan Place by the River is planned for the end of the summer.
Image: Editor Barbara Price with newly published Mack Laing book. (Submitted photo)
Ontario-born artist, photographer, writer, veteran, and noted naturalist Hamilton Mack Laing arrived in the Comox Valley in 1922. It was love at first sight. Laing bought five acres on the shoreline for $750, built a kit home, and cleared land to create Baybrook Nut Farm. Following his wife, Ethel’s, death, he built another home nearby called Shakesides.
Between 1922 and 1944 he wrote a manuscript about their lives and experiences in the Comox Valley, but it was never published. Baybrook: Life’s Best Adventure has now been printed 80 years later by the Comox Archives and Museum Society. Editor Barbara Price says, “It is a great privilege to bring this book to life 80 years after it was written. Mack Laing, an early Canadian naturalist, so wanted this manuscript published. It is a story of love and simplicity and living off the land. His message is as fresh today as when he wrote it.”
Laing died in 1982 at the age of 99; Mack Laing Nature Park remains as part of his legacy.
Mark Forsythe travels through BC and back in time, exploring the unique work of British Columbia Historical Federation members.
An excerpt from the Winter 2022-23 edition of British Columbia History.
Bob Hanna (right) with stone sculptor David Weir at unveiling of the Robert Hill Hanna VC statue. Photo: Adam Beck
The son of a Canadian war hero has unveiled a stone statue of his father in Kilkeel, Northern Ireland. Robert Hill Hanna immigrated to BC from County Down in 1905, and at age 27 enlisted with the 29th Battalion in Vancouver. His November 1914 attestation papers describe him as a “lumberman” with fair hair and blue eyes, standing 5 feet 7-1/2 inches (171 cm) tall. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for his efforts at the 1917 Battle of Hill 70 in northern France. With all of his company officers either killed or wounded, Hanna led a party against a fortified machine gun nest under heavy fire. His citation reads, “[H]e rushed through the wire and personally bayoneted three of the enemy and brained the fourth, capturing the position and silencing the machine gun.”
The people of Kilkeel never forgot their native son. A fundraising campaign by the Schomberg Society financed a life-sized statue that now stands in a public square near the heart of this fishing port. His son, Bob Hanna, journeyed with his family to Kilkeel from BC and told the BBC, “It’s unbelievable that an event of 105 years ago is suddenly in the forefront. This is happening to me now.”
Google Earth and local archival images make for an engrossing virtual tour of heritage buildings and places in Smithers. Developed by the Bulkley Valley Museum, the tour highlights the traditional territory—the yin tah—of the Wit’suwit’en people. The online viewer selects a building or site from the menu; Google Earth then swiftly zooms to that location, displaying a current image beside archival photos. Relevant information is included for historical context. Find the tour here: https://bvmuseum.org/virtual-exhibits. Research conducted for the virtual tour and downtown history walks are also the basis for a heritage registry project currently underway.
Part of the Bulkley Valley Museum’s Google Earth archival tour. Photo: Bulkley Valley Museum
Bravo to Richard Wright and Amy Newman, makers of Long Road to Cariboo, which won the Silver Award at the Independent Shorts Awards in Los Angeles and has now been accepted at three other film festivals. Storytelling and song recreate the back-breaking journey into the Cariboo during the gold rush, with special attention to its multicultural participants.
Title image from Long Road to Cariboo. Photo: Winters Quarters Productions
Richard Wright says, “The gold rush story is often told as European (i.e., white) miners coming to a bucolic landscape where ‘one could leave their gold sitting on the boardwalk.’ It was not this lofty image. It was miners from around the world, in particular Europeans, Chinese, South Americans, Mexicans, and, of course, First Nations. We wanted to tell and show the wide range of people who were here through their music.”
Imagine a 600-kilometre journey by foot from Fort Yale to the Cariboo gold fields across a vast and formidable landscape. Eventually the Cariboo Wagon Road provided wheeled passage to those who could afford it. The film traces that trek from the Fraser Canyon’s boiling rapids to the awe-inspiring Chasm wilderness near Clinton and beyond to the gold diggings. Long Road to Cariboo packs a lot of history into 22 minutes and can be seen at https://vimeo.com/726878846 and at “Richard T. Wright Photography–Winter Quarters Productions” on Facebook. Funding was provided by the New Pathways to Gold Society and BC Multiculturalism Branch; most scenes were filmed on the traditional lands of the Secwépemc (Shuswap) people.
Photo: Courtesy the Village of Daajing Giids
Signs reading “Village of Queen Charlotte” are now fading into history after local council voted unanimously to revert to the ancient Haida name, Daajing Giids, pronounced DAW-jean GEEDS. Village council responded to a request from the Haida Hereditary Chiefs Council and then canvassed its citizens. Mayor Kris Olsen told CBC, “We have embraced our responsibility and come through on the right side of this historic moment.”
Queen Charlotte Islands, Sound, and Village were named after one of Captain George Dixon’s ships when the Royal Navy officer and fur trader visited the area in 1787. (Charlotte was the wife of King George III.) The Islands were renamed Haida Gwaii in 2009 as part of a reconciliation agreement between the province and the Haida Nation. Initiatives to change colonial era names are underway in multiple BC communities.
Crew preparing exterior for painting at the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum. Photo: Mark Forsythe
Vancouver’s oldest building is showing its age. Built in 1868, the Old Hastings Mill Store was vital to workers at the adjacent Hastings sawmill for groceries, hardware, mail, and social contact. Originally located at the foot of Dunlevy Avenue at Vancouver Harbour, its entrance faced the water. A $200,000 restoration project includes repairs to the fir siding, window frames and chimney, topped off with a fresh coat of paint in its original white with rusty red accents. Rhino Design, a Vancouver renovation and restoration company, spent about four months working on the building, now located in Hastings Mill Park on Alma Street. The Old Hastings Mill Store Museum is operated by the last surviving chapter of the Native Daughters of BC, which saved the building from demolition in 1930. Donations are eagerly accepted via https://hastingsmillmuseum.ca. Net proceeds from the book Hastings Mill: The Historic Times of a Vancouver Community by Lisa Anne Smith are also being directed toward the project.
C.I.28 1929 (original C.I. issued 1918) Ng You Kong
An excerpt from the Winter 2022 edition of British Columbia History magazine
By Catherine Clement and June Chow
The 1885 Chinese Immigration Act introduced the first Chinese head tax; with it, an elaborate new system of documentation and surveillance was born.
Over the next six decades, a dizzying array of Chinese Immigration (or C.I.) records was created by the government to thwart Chinese in Canada at every turn. Each type of record was assigned a number; those that were designed as identification certificates were colour coded for easy reference. Altogether, some 60 different types of C.I. records were created and in use between 1885 and 1953.
Some C.I.s were innocent enough—simply forms that needed to be completed. For example, the C.I.9 permitted Chinese living in Canada to temporarily leave the country, allowing Chinese men to travel home to China to see their wives and have children.
Conversely, the C.I.18 and C.I.18a was a two-part questionnaire designed to authenticate the relationship between a father already living in Canada and the child he wished to sponsor, ostensibly for an education. School-aged children sponsored by their fathers would be the last allowable category under which Chinese could enter the country prior to the passing of the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act. As such, many boys entering Canada did so as “paper sons.” The C.I.18 and C.I.18a questionnaire was designed to catch those engaging in such fraudulent relationships; it often felt like an interrogation to those answering the questions.
Posed separately to father and child, the questions reveal heartbreak, reflecting the long years of family separation, and they foreshadow often strained father-son relationships between strangers being reunited:
“Where does your father live at present?” “Vancouver, BC.” “What business is your father engaged in?” “Laundryman.” “How long has he been in Canada?” “I don’t know.” “When did you last see your father?” “Three or four years ago.” “How often has he been back to China since first coming to Canada?” “Once only, I know. Three or four years ago.” [1]
The most common and coveted of the C.I. records were the certificates issued to a migrant once they were approved for entry to Canada. The C.I.5 and the C.I.30 were the two main entry certificates. A C.I.5, which by 1912 was a green certificate that included a photo, was issued to labourers and others required to pay the head tax. The brown-coloured C.I.30 was issued to those belonging to a class exempt from its payment, mainly merchants, diplomats, teachers, or clergy, and their family members. The bluish-green C.I.28 certificate and the orange C.I.36 certificate were both replacement certificates. And the C.I.45 was created exclusively to implement the registration requirement of the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Regardless of when or where a C.I. was issued, only one original was produced. As valuable as gold, C.I. certificates had real monetary value, given the associated head tax. They could be used as collateral for loans or bought and sold so that another person could come to Gold Mountain. The papers had to be safeguarded. Chinese had to show their papers on demand; many carried their C.I. certificate with them at all times, especially transient labourers. Over the years, some certificates became worn, dog-eared, ripped, and taped back together—a testament to the hard lives of their owners.
These fragile pieces of paper also served as a constant reminder of the unwanted and second-class status of the Chinese in Canada. Not surprisingly, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1947 and Chinese residents were finally allowed to become Canadian citizens, one of the first casualties was the C.I. certificate. Tens of thousands of these documents were destroyed—torn up, burned, or thrown in the garbage—as part of an effort to expunge the memories and humiliation associated with these papers.
Some 600 surviving C.I. certificates and records contributed by families across Canada for the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act will form the largest and most comprehensive collection of such documents available for research, study and public history. The collection will be available at UBC Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, starting July 1, 2023.
June Chow is completing her Master of Archival Studies at the School of Information at the University of British Columbia. Her practice is dedicated to advancing archival preservation, access, and equity issues across Chinese Canadian communities. She is the archivist for “The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act,” https://1923-chinese-exclusion.ca/.
Catherine Clement is a community historian, curator, and author based in Vancouver. Her work has focussed on the lesser-known, personal stories of Chinese Canadian history. She is curating a national exhibition called “The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act” which will open July 1, 2023, in Vancouver. Learn more at 1923-chinese-exclusion.ca.
C.I.5 August 1923 Quon Song Now (also known as Charlie Quan)
C.I.5 July 1918 Yong Jack Sang
Lee Yick Hong
C.I.30 1914 Mrs. Sam Shee
C.I.36 October 1914 (original C.I.5 issued in 1910) Wong Gut
C.I.45 May 1924 WONG Young Ming (aka James Ming Wong)
N.F.63 June 1947 Jin Hong
Filmed at Old Hastings Mill Store Museum in Vancouver, author Lisa Anne Smith in conversation with BCHF’s Mark Forsythe, about all things related to Vancouver’s oldest surviving building.
Smith discusses her new book, Hastings Mill: The Historic Times of a Vancouver Community, delving deep into colourful stories of the mill, its eclectic cast of characters, and how an unlikely group of women, the Native Daughters of British Columbia, saved an iconic remnant of Vancouver heritage from demolition. Follow the link HERE.
During our 2022 conference, each session began with a minute-long video consisting of historic moments and pictures from the BCHF’s first century. We’re now posting the videos on Facebook. You can also watch them below.
Content warning: This video relates to Indian Residential Schools. A reminder that the Indian Residential School Survivors Society has a 24 hour Crisis Line available: 1-866-925-4419.
A research team from Williams Lake First Nation spoke to the recent BCHF conference about how accessing residential school records helps to shape to shape commemorations of school sites and the surrounding communities. The panelists are Genevieve Weber (Royal BC Museum), Charlene Belleau (Williams Lake First Nation), and Whitney Spearing (Williams Lake First Nation)
Scott Sheffield’s investigations of the academic literature on the Second World War in BC revealed a surprising dearth of literature explicitly exploring the impact of that global conflict on the communities and residents of this province.
Through some concerted searching he was able to glean a number of references and sometimes thoughtful and concerted coverage of the war years across a diverse range of hundreds of works on BC’s history. On the whole though, the story was fragmentary, disconnected, and relatively meagre.
Only a few stories have been incorporated into the broader narrative of BC’s history: the internment, dispossession and expatriation of the Japanese-Canadian population; the economic and industrial boom; women’s enhanced contributions as a result; and the growth in the strength and legitimacy of organized labour.
Beyond these usual touch stones, relatively little evidence that the war occurred in this province has managed to penetrate the scholarly history, public memory or identity of British Columbians. Yet, as he explains in a recent presentation to the BCHF annual conference, the evidence and historical writing that does exist suggests that the Second World War was fundamentally important to the development of modern British Columbia.
R. Scott Sheffield is an associate professor of history at the University of the Fraser Valley who spent the bulk of his career researching Indigenous military service and he is the author of The Red Man’s on the Warpath: The Image of the ‘Indian’ and the Second World War (UBC Press, 2004), and (with Noah Riseman) Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War: The Politics, Experiences and Legacies of War in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge U Press, 2019), as well as numerous articles and book chapters. His current research explores British Columbia’s home front during the Second World War, especially the role of community in shaping British Columbians’ experience of total war.
Objects have a life within a museum’s collection. That life may be short or long. New objects enter collections and others leave collections as part of the professional process of curatorial stewardship. Today as a society we are re-evaluating our many histories. In this recent talk to the BCHF annual conference, Dr. Lorne Hammond presents examples of how that process works with a museum collection and in exhibits, and show how an object’s meaning can completely change over the centuries, as our interpretations of BC history evolve.
Hammond is a curator in the history department at the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives.
Today Indigenous people are struggling to negotiate treaties with the BC and Canadian governments and in other ways to re-assume meaningful say over their ancestral lands and resources. Likewise, they are seeking to re-establish forms of self-governance that will be recognized and respected within Canada’s federal constitutional traditions.
Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadians alike are rightly asking why this process is proving so difficult, and likewise why respectful reconciliatory relations were not established much earlier? The answer to these and related questions require careful historical analysis.
In this recent presentation to the BCHF annual conference Keith Thor Carlson brings ethnohistorical methods and techniques to provide an assessment of settler colonial processes in Canada’s Pacific province. He concludes by outlining the pre-conditions, as he sees them, for building reconciliation between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadian society today.
Thor Carlson is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous and Community-engaged History at the University of the Fraser Valley. He is also the director of the university’s Peace and Reconciliation Centre.
British Columbia Historical FederationPO Box 448, Fort Langley, BC, Canada, V1M 2R7Information: info@bchistory.ca
The Secretariat of the BCHF is located on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish speaking Peoples.
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